Recycling Institutions : How Waste Becomes an Urban Mine

Abstract

This open access book investigates the phenomenon of recycling institutions in urban mining using social sciences lenses on the empirical context of waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), landfills as a potential resource pool and the recycling of building materials in Norway. There is a dual meaning to the term ‘recycling institutions’, and this book has the ambition to explore both. The first refers to institutions that recycle, i.e., the institutional infrastructure that facilitates material recycling. From household attitudes and practices to the laws and regulations that govern waste management, there is an institutional apparatus that recycling relies upon, which gains increased importance as the sustainability agenda develops. The second meaning refers to the recycling of institutions, in the sense that the institutional setup itself is being repurposed and transformed. This more metaphorical meaning points to the way in which emerging societal ambitions (such as the circular economy) stretch and bend existing institutions by imposing new functions upon them. Institutions are conservative and backward-looking and tend to resist rapid and radical changes that are incompatible with the ideas and practices they are built on. So, whereas the first is about designing new institutions for circularity, the second is about modifying and “recycling” existing institutions to meet the challenges circularity may entail. The central premise is that relevant, supportive and well-functioning institutional environments are crucial in the transition to a greener society that encourages industries, businesses, households and citizens to act in more sustainable ways, and it identify both possibilities and obstacles in the emergence of institutions that support urban mining. This book integrates a range of disciplines in the social sciences to investigate the phenomenon of recycling institutions. By examining the case of urban mining in Norway, with a special focus on how existing structures developed for waste management can be repurposed to facilitate this new function, the book provides insight into a scenario where material sourcing from anthropogenic sources is dissociated from natural resource scarcity and is instead linked to political ambitions and an attempt to stay at the forefront of sustainability transitions.